rickb@bucket.UUCP (Rick Bensene) (11/14/88)
Greetings, I was wondering if anyone out there has taken to trying to figure out just how their 'Watson' works. In case you might be wondering just what a Watson is, it is a board for IBM-PC which provides a TI 32020 DSP as a coprocessor to the PC. There is also a codec to do the digitizing, and all the necessary interfaces to connect up to the phone line. The watson program sets the hardware up to act as a really fancy answering machine, allowing remote control and 'voice mail' facilities through the use of "Touch Tone (TM)" signalling. While Watson works fantastic as an answering service, I'd like to augment it in such a way that I can use it also as an interface to my home control system so that I can call in and do things like remotely change lighting, heating, and security system parameters via Touch Tone commands. Natural Microsystems, Watson's manufacturer, provides a package called "VBX" for Watson that is essentially a library of subroutines which you can link to to provide full user control for the system (I think that the Watson software as supplied with the basic system is simply an application linked to these libraries). However, they want over $500 for the library and they require Lattice C to make use of it, which is another couple hundred bucks. While I can see the value of such an expense for a company that wants to use the features of Watson for telemarketing and data retrieval systems, I can't justify that kind of expense for my homecontrol application. I'm wondering if anyone out there has done any work on reverse engineering the Watson code to attempt to find out more about how it works. I did spring for Natural Microsystem's $50 book describing Watson's hardware from a programmers point of view (which bits in which registers do what), but it is useless to me at this point because really all it describes is the interfaces for the phone line control stuff, and the interface to the Signal Processor CPU on the Watson board, which is apparently loaded up with all kinds of fancy DSP code when the Watson package is started up. Hopefully someone out there it netland has some information or has poked around at the innards of Watson's code enough to get an idea what is going on. If you have, I'd appreciate hearing from you. Many thanks, Rick Bensene --- Rick Bensene Tektronix, Inc. PO Box 3500 C1-970 Vancouver, WA 98668 ..tektronix!tekigm2!rickb (work) Voice: (206) 253-5489 (10A-5P Pacific) ..tektronix!tessi!bucket!rickb (home) BBS: (503) 254-0458 300/1200/2400 -- Rick Bensene Tektronix, Inc. PO Box 3500 C1-970 Vancouver, WA 98668 ..tektronix!tekigm2!rickb (work) Voice: (206) 253-5489 (10A-5P Pacific) ..tektronix!teksce!bucket!rickb (home) BBS: (503) 254-0458 300/1200/2400
john@anasaz.UUCP (John Moore) (11/14/88)
In article <1138@bucket.UUCP> rickb@bucket.UUCP (Rick Bensene) writes:
]I was wondering if anyone out there has taken to trying to figure out just
]how their 'Watson' works. In case you might be wondering just what a Watson
]is, it is a board for IBM-PC which provides a TI 32020 DSP as a coprocessor
]to the PC. There is also a codec to do the digitizing, and all the
I also have a Watson and bought the $50.00 book. I would love to use
it with microport (it's sure silly to boot up DOS just to answer the
phone!). I called up the manufacturer and they were completely uninterested!
They offered to sell me the source code for $1,000,000 but would offer
no help otherwise. SIgh. I HATE people with attitudes like that!
If anyone has a device driver, etc, for it for Unix, I'd sure like
to have it.
--
John Moore (NJ7E) {decvax, ncar, ihnp4}!noao!nud!anasaz!john
(602) 861-7607 (day or eve) {gatech, ames, rutgers}!ncar!...
The opinions expressed here are obviously not mine, so they must be
someone else's. :-)